Two weeks ago I mentioned a “blogicle” (there must be a better word for this—blog+ article?) that bemoaned the conversion of print literary journals into online media. From an administrator’s point of view, it has a lot to do with cost-benefits: an online journal is a lot cheaper to run than a print journal, and it conceivably can have a wider readership.
The blog has this to stay about the value of print journals:
"…any successful editor of a given quarterly must establish or continue an editorial program (that is largely based upon the history of that magazine) and hew to the line involved.
"The Sewanee Review, not alone but nearly alone among literary quarterlies that provide a review of letters unobscured by vacuous critical jargon and unmoved by ephemeral literary fashion, has to its great credit done just this—and not just since 1973 when Mr. Core assumed the editorship."
The problem here is in some ways one that is “the shock of the new.” The threshold for innovation has become much lower than it once was, and this lower threshold has proliferated into just about every aspect of human life. It has become, in many ways, a choice about how to live. Do we follow fast and ever-changing trends of technology and innovation? Or do we subscribe to a more tuned-out, back-woodsy way of life? Choosing "in between" to my mind is a lean towards innovation and technology, because that will only continue to grow, skewing the middle path towards its side.
This is not to say that literary journals in principle are out of place with mainstream life—maybe the reason they are going online with greater frequency in the first place. Literature, the so-called “avante-garde” is more present and immediate, and we can have access to it (depending on our technology) almost anywhere on (and I daresay off—if we are so inclined) the planet. Is it right or even needful to insist that a literary journal stay the same according to any literary or editorial program; and by that I mean hold to the same ideals that rise above (or lurk below?) literary fashion? What, for that matter, is ephemeral literary fashion? I get that some literature is ephemeral and will always be, but can we ever point to a certain kind of literature and inevitably know that it will endure? Not to mention the pathways of influence in literarary tradition, ephemeral or not.
What interests me more on this subject is where technology is taking the human race. I can well imagine a time when a human may be able to internalize all the issues of a literary journal like Sewanee Review, and perhaps be the author of all future journals in some shared, internalized writing process/experience. The reader becomes the author—both part of a self-contained and fully internalized writing experience that never “physically” enters the real word via a written text. The definition of written text here being some kind of book/paper/magazine that language is written on. The follow-on being a readable text having a much different meaning a couple hundred years from now--writing, reading, and editorial practices included.
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